direction artistique karine lethiec
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] THE FOUR-LEGGED RAVEN by Kryštof Mařatka Melodramatic farce for two actors and instrumental ensemble on texts by Daniil Harms
performed by the CALLIOPÉE ENSEMBLE Karine Lethiec, artistic leader 2 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven © Didier Bertrand © Didier THE FOUR-LEGGED RAVEN by Kryštof Mařatka Melodramatic farce for two actors and instrumental ensemble on texts by Daniil Harms direction artistique karine lethiec Instrumentation: 2 actors, conductor, oboe, clarinet, horn, accordion, piano, 2 percussionists, viola and double bass Length: 1h15 min
with Kryštof Mařatka, composer and conductor Alain Carré and Vincent Figuri, actors and the Calliopée Ensemble, artistic leader Karine Lethiec
David Walter, oboe Chen Halevi, clarinet Vladimir Dubois, horn Karine Lethiec, viola Laurène Durantel, double bass Renaud Muzzolini and Nicolas Gerbier, percussions Aude Guiliano, accordion Frédéric Lagarde, piano
The cast may have to be altered
Commissioned by the Présences Festival / Radio France 2007 World Premiere February 18th, 2007, Maison de Radio France Czech Premiere March 26th, 2007, Prague Philharmonic Radio Broadcast February 8th, 2007, France Musique Publisher Éditions Jobert - Paris French text Subtitles available in German, English or Czech
Video extract of The Four-Legged Raven in the TV documentary “A Portrait of Kryštof Mařatka” produced and broadcasted by the Mezzo Channel in September 2007. WATCH A VIDEO EXTRACT: http://krystofmaratka.com/fr/oeuvres/le-corbeau-a-quatre-pattes/
“Kryštof Mařatka, who has spent his teenage years during the Czechoslovak dictatorship’s final years, prior to the Velvet Revolution, has freed himself from all the rage accumulated there through a beneficial psychodrama. The two actors, Alain Carré and Vincent Figuri, perfect in their double monologue – rather than dialogue – excel in expressionist mockery against a sumptuous richness of invention in the quite dense instrumental formation, in this case the excellent Calliopée Ensemble directed with fieriness and vital tonicity by the composer himself. This cheerful, terrifying and farcical Raven has inscited a very enthusiastic audience to applaud vigorously.” Harry Halbreich – Crescendo, February 18th, 2007
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 3 THE WORK The Four-Legged Raven presents itself as a concert piece enriched by several theatrical elements: gesticulation, facial expressions, occasional changes of spots for the two actors, as well as vocal interventions from the musicians who punctuate, sing, murmur, whisper, or make music with various objects such as pebbles, children’s toys, hunting lures etc. Despite these scenic principles, the melodrama wishes to remain faithful to the idea of a concert piece: no staging, no decor, no special light, no costumes. The narrative predominates and confers its rhythm to the music, so much so that the subject matter, its often absurd nature, are not only reflected in the musical parts, but invade the very interpretation of the music.
The melodrama form has always posed a problem of balance between spoken the text and the music. Composers often “sacrifice” the sonic transparency of the lyrics by favouring their “colour” and their “rhythm”, while their meaning is being dispersed in the sound whose volume is much too high. The musical writing and the spoken word diction in The Four-Legged Raven want to preserve the greatest possible audibility of the lyrics whose rhythm and intensity then dictate the character and the importance of the musical sequences. A discrete amplification of the spoken voices is also set up in the hall (headset, speakers, etc.).
The melodrama is composed of a sequence of short stories accompanied by a musical discourse which works as if it were another plane of literary content. To remain faithful to Harms’ work, throughout his melodrama, Kryštof Mařatka favours a narrative dimension, in the work’s form as well as in the mu- sical writing. The order chosen by the composer is not trying to connect the stories one to the other, on the contrary, it aims to create a contrasting musical and dramatic fabric a bit like a kaleidoscope of sketches and crazy situations.
Once upon a time there was a redhead man with no eyes nor ears. He did not have any hair either and it was by convention that he was called a redhead. He could not speak because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He did not even have arms or legs. He had no belly either, no back, nor backbone, neither had he any bowels. He had nothing at all! So that we are wondering who is it that we are talking about. It is therefore preferable not to add anything on the matter.
Daniil HARMS - blue notebook n° 10
4 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven © Ensemble Calliopée © Ensemble
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 5 The four
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[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 7 THE AUTHOR - DANIIL HARMS (1905-1942) by Jean-Philippe Jaccard
When at the beginning of the World War II, Daniil HARMS (1905-1942) and most of his friends were mown down by the repression, a whole literary generation was decimated: the one which did not have the time to get published before it was si- lenced by triumphant Stalinism. Heir to the avant-gardes of the 1910s, co-founder of the last “leftist” literary organization in Soviet Russia, the Union of Real Art (OBE- RIU), then turned, like so many others, into a “class enemy” in the 1930s, Harms is among the many writers whose works have remained in drawers for long decades. At first poet, he gradually converted to prose. Master of the short form, Harms had become the horrified observer of the monstrous reality that surrounded him, in miniatures often funny, always tragic. This reality, dominated by the stupidity and violence of a “human flock”, he was to suffer it himself, and his diary, a unique do- cument in its genre, is a good echo of that.
Like his predecessors, Harms saw reason as an instrument that divides reality into pieces. However, reality isn’t immobile and circumscribable, and dividing it can only be arbitrary. The same is true of poetic representation: words are conventions that only participate in the arbitrary and can in no way reflect the real world.
Prose of the 1930s was invaded by everyday life, a horrible daily life that forever drew mankind to its lowest: promiscuity in community apartments where many families pile up, dirt and stench of the buildings’ cour- tyards, aggressivity of a human “herd” supported by the police and the janitor snitches, weakness of the individuals, disappearances and arbitrary arrests, mutilated bodies, sudden diseases, etc. Such was this “primary reality” which then appeared only as an accumulation of small pieces of reality unrelated to each other. This is the main characteristic of Harms’ heroes, thrown into a world overtaken by such arbitrariness that anything can happen there, a world which they do not understand because it is too big for them. Beaten, repulsed, deceived, obsessed by an awful dream, insomniac, entangled in objects and helpless in front of a reality that only seeks to destroy them, they have their ancestors in Russian literature: whether one thinks of Akaky Akakievich in The Overcoat or of Poprishchin in Diary of a Madman, by Gogol, or of all those “humiliated and offended” who populate Dostoyevsky’s work. But above all, they are brothers of Camus’s Meursault (The Stranger), guillotined, of Kafka’s Mr. K. (The Trial), stabbed in a quarry, of Becket’s Molloy (Molloy), locked up in an asylum, of Nabokov’s Cincinnatus C. (Invitation to a Beheading), who is awaiting his condemnation, or of Ionesco’s Berenger (Rhinoceros), besieged at his home.
The theme of the arrest, already present in 1927 in Harms’ play Elizaveta Bam and that one can trace in his work up to the end – that is up to a period when the writer himself was undergoing the fate of his heroes – is in fact only the last stage of the frightening relationship that the “rhinocerized” world has with man. This relationship is not only the result of hostile external forces (a repressive power, for example), it is ine- vitable. The only hope is that a miracle will happen, because, as Harms writes it in his diary in 1939, only a miracle can destroy “the physical structure of the world”. This is the theme of a short story written that same year, 1939, The Old Woman, whose story is reminiscent of Ionesco’s Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It. Changing the physical structure of the world would be to beat death, symbolized by the old woman which the narrator seeks to get rid of as he is trying to write the story of a miracle worker who performs no miracle. The miracle, which is therefore also the act of writing, will indeed not take place: the only change in “physi- cal structure” that occurs is the decomposition of the old woman’s corpse. The individual is crushed by the mortifying reality which surrounds him and of the God whom he addresses his prayers to, only a large green caterpillar remains, squirming on the ground. If the absurd is a fundamental element of Harms’ work, it is important to go beyond and to note that this fracture is being realized within the act of writing itself. The text, just as Harms’ heroes, manages barely to exist. At any given moment, it is under the threat of disappearing: either a character leaves the narrative, taking with him what could have been said about him had he remained, either the character does not even exist, either he dies the minute he has been introduced, either the narrator admits not knowing anything about him, or he is tired of writing, or worse, the inkwell disappears, depriving the writer of the very material used for writing.
8 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven Harms’ prose too is turned towards silence and is often just the story of its own self-destruction or simply of its inability to exist. And the problem is not that there wouldn’t be anything to speak about, but that what is to be spoken about is unspeakable: the narrator is not able to consider things in their logical relationships and, for him, cause and effect are two terms that do not meet. Thus everything becomes possible in this world of indeterminism and one can perfectly well for example change the name of Grigoriev to Antonov before introducing him to the tsar and ensure a career for him that we will never learn anything about; Pantopassov can recover his sight as arbitrarily as he had lost it and become a great man; as for Natasha, she can die of having eaten two candies and sung a song, then resuscitate moments later. And ultimately, it is this same distortion of the cause-and-effect link that fundamentally rules Harm’s narrative processes: ar- bitrary associations, thematic verbal inconsistency, arbitrary behaviour and events, chronic incompleteness etc. To an absurd “primary reality” corresponds an absurd writing any element of which can be associated with any other. At the same time, all these elements are the expression of the human tragedy and the main comic source of Harms’ prose.
During the period of “stagnation”, Harms has been interpreted in two ways in the Soviet Union. He made his comeback to literature as a writer of children’s books writer when, in 1962, a collection came out, quite modest, but which nonetheless confirmed that his writing for younger generations, while having only been a breadwinner for their author, already belonged to the best classics of the genre. The Soviet critics spoke little of his work for adults and, of his texts, published only those which were the funniest and the least likely to disturb the obligatory happiness in which the country lived. Literature of the absurd could only be the result of Western decadence, and the country marching towards a brighter future was not able to handle texts as black as those that Harms had composed in the late 1930s. That is why, even though there is not a line in his work that could be labelled as “anti-Soviet”, it was not until 1988 that a first book was published in Russia.
Harms has long been an author forgotten, then misunderstood, and finally underestimated. Reading him today however, one realizes that he is a figure of outmost importance, and not only in the context of Russian literature: a living example of the difficulties faced by avant-gardes confronted with totalitarian regimes, he ended up fitting organically both in the tradition of Russian prose inaugurated by Gogol in the 19th century and in the vast existentialist current that swept all European literature in the 20th century away. Snuffed out at the age of thirty-six by the most spectacular attempt of normalization in history, he also is a striking manifestation of artistic resistance and of the durability of the literary process, whatever the cir- cumstances.
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 9 THE COMPOSER - Kryštof Mařatka (1972-)
Czech Music Prize Composition “Classic Prague Awards” 19/01/2019
Czech composer Kryštof Mařatka lives and works in Prague and Paris. The versatility which marks his artistic activities, carried out between several countries, is often considered as a strong link that he creates between the various cultural universes which he’s inspired by or which he interrogates, while discovering new ways of musical expression. Kryštof Mařatka’s catalogue of works reflects the author’s attachment to multiple sources and more or less evocative subjects, some of which return regularly, and which are very present in all of his works. These are the traditional music of the world, the birth of Man’s language, prehistoric art and musical instruments of the Palaeolithic. Other works evoke intimate universes with more personal touches such as dreams, contemplation and memories - a collection of legacies sometimes woven as allegories to a childhood lived in a totalitarian country. Melodramas (written on various texts by Karel Čapek, Franz Kafka, Daniil Harms...) are a very special category in Kryštof Mařatka’s catalogue, while in other works, the instrumental aspect and the know-how of the performer are at the heart of the score, seeking to combine virtuosity, technique and invention in complicity with the sound nature of the instrument. Other works in Kryštof Mařatka’s catalogue are dedicated to young musicians and have been conceived specifically for pedagogical projects organised by structures such as the Philharmonie de Paris (DEMOS), regional or municipal Conservatoires, or abroad, as for Trossingen’s Hochschule or for Prague’s Conservatoire. Various arrangements and transcriptions finish off Kryštof Mařatka’s catalogue and form a coherent whole with the composer’s original works as they are often born from the need for a musical practice led by the author and his colleagues. Many institutions, festivals and orchestras have commissioned, programmed and / or interpreted Kryštof Mařatka’s works: the Donaueschinger Musiktage SWR Festival (Germany), the Caramoor Summer Music Festival (USA), the Philharmonie de Paris, the Prague National theatre and Opera, the Prague Symphonic Orchestra FOK, the Festival Pablo Casals de Prades (France), the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (USA), the Calliopée Ensemble (Paris), the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Strasbourg MUSICA Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Vigmor Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées (Paris), the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland), the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Spring Festival, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National de France, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Radio France Choir, the Polish Chamber Choir Gdansk, the Ensemble InterContemporain, the Ensemble Modern… As conductor, Kryštof Mařatka performs with symphonic and various other ensembles in programs often built around his own work, but also offering repertoire pieces and compositions by his contemporaries. Kryštof Mařatka has thus directed ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Nederlands Kamerorkest at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Prague Philharmonia Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, the Polish National Radio Orchestra, the Lille National Orchestra, the Prague National Opera Orchestra and many others.
10 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven Kryštof Mařatka also performs as a pianist. The physical relationship to a musical instrument and the confrontation to the art of interpretation conditioned by the mastery of the playing is one of the keys to his composer’s thought. Coming from the piano class of the Prague Conservatoire (1986-1992), he stems from the Czech piano school tradition and continues to play solo or shares the stage with other chamber music performers. Apart from the works of the repertoire and his own compositions, he often puts forward his passion for the work of Leoš Janáček or for improvisation. He thus tries to raise awareness of the beauty of musical creation through the experience of the birth of a work witnessed by the audience in real time. Kryštof Mařatka is the author of the filmFrom Your Life (74’ min, in Czech with French or English subtitles) dedicated to his father, Zdeněk Mařatka. Born in 1914, this eminent physician has known eight different political regimes: against the background of philosophical reflection and discussions between several generations of a family, it is the whole of the 20th century that we see emerge here. A book/DVD (French, English and Czech) has been published in 2016 about the creation of the film (Tomáš Doruška Productions - Prague). Many performers have recorded his music, and three monographic CDs of Kryštof Mařatka’s works have been produced: one devoted to his chamber music (CD Lyrinx), the other to concert pieces with orchestra (CD Arion), and finally one to his music for ensemble (CD Dux). In 2016, the Czech National Film Archives of Czech Cinema published a DVD of the Czech silent movie Batalion from 1927 with Kryštof Mařatka’s original music, commissioned by the Musée du Louvre. As a conductor, Kryštof Mařatka also recorded a CD for Challenge Classics with Alexander Raskatov’s Obikhod, together with the Hilliard Ensemble and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. As a pianist, in 2015, he was asked by the Czech Radio to record Leoš Janáček’s Diary of One Who Disappeared with tenor Aleš Briscein. In 2006, Kryštof Mařatka won the Grand Prize and the Audience Prize at the International Competition of Musical Personalities in Lodz (Poland) for his work Luminarium - Mosaic of Twenty-Seven Fragments of World Music - concerto for clarinet and orchestra, the 1st Prize of the Shanghai Spring International Festival in China (2007) and of Radio France for his work Chant G’hai for suona (Chinese oboe) and symphonic orchestra. The piece has been programmed at the Expo Shanghai in 2010) and reprised by the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017, with Hu Chen Yun as soloist.In 2007, he was awarded the Pierre Cardin Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris, for musical composition. In 2007, a documentary film has been produced about Kryštof Mařatka’s musical universe: Birth of an imaginary - (26’ min, Karl More Productions), broadcast on the European television channel MEZZO.
www.krystofmaratka.com
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 11 THE ACTORS
Alain Carré
Actor and director, this troubadour of the word has to his cre- dit two hundred performances a year in Belgium, Switzerland, predominantly in France, but also in Germany, Poland, Mexico, Israel, Brazil, Spain... He directs and interprets The Song of Roland, François Villon’s Le Testament, the integral work of Arthur Rim- baud, R. M. Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Jacques Brel’s songs, Salvador Dalí’s Diary of a Genius, Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zara- thustra, Marguerite Duras’ The Malady of Death... In the theater, he has staged Amelie Nothomb’s Human Rites and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Don Juan on Trial, Pierre Cor- neille’s Le Cid, Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu. Music fascinates him. He is integrating it into most of his shows. His encounters with Jean-Claude Malgoire and Gabriel Garrido led him to stage operas: Berlioz’s Béa- trice et Bénédict, Cervantès/Leigh/Brel’s Man of la Mancha, Massenet’s Don Quichotte, Telemann’s Der Geduldige Socrates, J. S. Bach’s Coffee and Peasants Cantatas, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Bastien & Bastienne. He has also directed original shows in which he is dialoguing with pianist François- René Duchâble: The Prophet Bird, A Trip to the Moon, The Water Here is Well Worth the Afterlife. Together, they have created Epistolary Concerts dedicated to Berlioz, Chopin-Musset, Bach-Satie, Hugo and Juliette, Musset-Sand, Rimbaud Thief of Fire, Nerval, Char, Petrarch, La Fontaine, André Velter... Alain Carré is above all a voice that can be found on about fifty CDs showcasing his vast repertoire, as well as many recordings for France Culture Radio.
Vincent Figuri
Thanks to his dual training as musician and actor, Vincent Figuri has been established for some years as the incontrovertible specialist in the role of recitation, particularly in melodramatic parts when such productions are brought back into favour and where « his voice makes one listen to the music ». After varied appearances on the French theatrical stage (the Prince in The New Menoza by Lenz, the madman in Gogol’s Diary of a madman, Aperghis…), his comedian’s temperament and his training of professional musician leads him to cast a new light on works where mu- sic and theatre are joined. He totally renews the approach of classics like Stravinsky’s Soldier’s tale, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf or The Story of Babar by Poulenc which he “transforms in glittering one-man-show where he recites, sings, plays and dances”. He reveals forgotten masterpieces by Mozart, Liszt, Sibelius, Schumann, Martinu, Pro- kofiev, Reynaldo Hahn, Ibert, Bruneau, Fibich, Ostrcil and many other composers on texts by Musset, Dau- det, Goethe, Byron… which he discovers in European libraries and bring back into light after a musicologist, translation and rewriting work where his voice is the one of a comedian and a musician. He can bring more than 20 French creations and 12 world creations to his credit. He also arouses commands with composers like Noël Lee or Kryštof Mařatka who wrote melodramas for him. He has been engaged in the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Prague’s International Festival, Présences Radio France, Pablo Casals Prades, Auvers-sur-Oise, Consonances in Saint-Nazaire, Art sacré in Antibes, Amadeus in Geneva, Abbaye de la Prée… where his col- laborations with Marek Janowski, Jiří Bělohlávek, Mickaël Rudy, Calliopée and Carpe Diem ensembles, Arto Noras, Noël Lee, Isabelle Moretti, Michel Dalberto, Pascal Amoyel or the Ysaÿe Quartet has been greeted by critics who have seen in him “an artist of the highest value”. Tireless discoverer, Vincent Figuri has been a producer on France-Musique where his radio broadcasts (Un Eté à la campagne dedicated to overlooked French composers, Mémoire retrouvée, Magazine de 7h à 9h) received an excellent welcome in the national press. Wishing to introduce classical music to wider audiences, he is regularly presenting young public concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National d’Île de France and the Orchestre National de France.
12 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven Vincent Figuri
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 13 CALLIOPÉE ENSEMBLE © Jeff © Jeff Ropars
Founded in 1999, the Calliopée Ensemble is a chamber music ensemble with variable geometry, from two to ten musicians, artists of international level who combine their qualities of solo and chamber music interprets under the artistic direction of Karine Lethiec. The ensemble also joins forces with artists and personalities from other disciplines. In parallel with the transmission of masterpieces of chamber music by classics to composers of the present day, the ensemble is committed to searching new repertoires of past and present and invested in sharing it with all audiences. He has commissioned many contemporary works. The Calliopée Ensemble’s philosophy is above all to convey, through the emotion of music, a taste for works of the musical heritage and a curiosity for today’s creation, with an original perspective, broadened to artistic, historic or scientific contexts as well as to contemporary issues.
The ensemble is performing on prestigious stages, theatres and festivals (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Salle Gaveau, Opéra Comique, Salle Cortot, Opéra de Rouen, Hall Parnassos in Athens, La Folle Journée de Nantes, Les Flâneries de Reims, Présences Festival, Pablo Casals Festival in Prades, Gergiev Rotterdam Festival, Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, Madrid Jazz Festival...).
At the same time, it is conceiving artistic and educational projects in mid and long term partnerships with original institutions, teams and diverse audiences (residencies at the National Archeology Museum initiated in May 2018, in the Val-d’Oise region since 2016, at the University of Orléans and its theatre Le Bouillon since 2016, at the Museum of the Great War of the Pays de Meaux region between 2011 and 2018, and at the United States Foundation in Paris since 2017).
The Calliopée Ensemble also develops and interprets interdisciplinary programs and shows with connections to the fields of fine artsChagall ( exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, Degas Danse Dessin at the Musée d’Orsay), history (musical tours of museum collections), literature (musical tales), science (Cosmophonies and Mozart and the Stars with astrophysicist Hubert Reeves), film (screening with live music Like in 1914, Krazy Kat, original soundtrack for a feature by Don Kent) and dance (Isadora Duncan, when music becomes dance).
www.ensmeblecalliopee.com
14 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven THEY TRUSTED US
Théâtre du Merlan, Scène Nationale de Marseille La Ferme du Buisson, Scène Nationale de Noisiel La Halle aux grains, Scéne Nationale de Blois L’Equinoxe, Scène Nationale de Chateauroux Scène Watteau à Nogent sur Marne
Théâtre et centres culturels de Bourg-en-Bresse, Montélimar, Saint-Raphaël, Carcassone, Saint-Laurent-du-Var, Vittel, Mirecourt, Epinal, Valenciennes, Arras, Levallois-Perret, Rungis, Kremlin Bicêtre, L’Häy-les-roses, Meaux, Taverny, Saint-Leu-la- Forêt, Chatenay Malabry, Vincennes, Orléans, Compiègne...
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord Théâtre Sylvia Montfort Théâtre de la Porte Saint Martin Théâtre de l’Athénée
Opéra comique Opéra de Rouen Opéra de Toulon Grand thêatre de Dijon Opéra-théâtre de Clermont Ferrand Salle Gaveau Salle Cortot Salle Olivier Messiaen/Radio-France Salon d’honneur de l’Hotel National des Invalides Auditorium Marcel Landowski Auditorium du Musée d’Orsay Fondation Singer-Polignac Unesco à Paris Hôtel de ville de Paris Salon Musicora / Grand Auditorium Halle de la Villette Abbaye de Fontevraud Chateaux de Chambord, de Fontainebleau, de La Roche Guyon… Les concerts de Poche La Folle Journée à Nantes,
Festival Présences à Paris, Festival des Flâneries de Rheims, Festival Pablo Casals de Prades, Festival de Sceaux, Festival des Forêts, Festival Classic au vert, Festival de Be- sançon, Festival du Vexin, Festival des Arcs, Festival Pyreneos Classicos en Espagne, Festival Amadeus à Genève, Festival du Jazz à MadridFestival du Printemps de Prague…
Abbaye de Neumunster à Luxembourg , Thêatre National Mohamed V à Rabat, Hall Parnassos à Athenes, Gergiev Festival à Rotterdam, Thêatre de Bolzano, Rudulphinum de Prague, Sumida Triphony Hall à Tokyo…
[ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven 15 KARINE LETHIEC, artistic leader of the Calliopée Ensemble
An eclectic and passionate artist, Karine Lethiec is recognized for her high artistic standards and openness, which give her a place of choice among sought-after musicians, especially for her expertise in chamber music and her conception of interdisciplinary programs. Born into a family of musicians, she began music at a very young age and graduated from the Conservatoires supérieurs de musique in Lyon, Paris, Geneva and Berne. She is laureate of the International Tertis Competition and the Banque Populaire Foundation. She holds the Certificate of Aptitude to the functions of professor and teaches at the Conservatory of the City of Paris (Paris 8). She was an education consultant for the City of Paris between 2014 and 2017. Her generous viola playing and the extent of her repertoire for all formations with her instrument make her an artist very much in demand by many chamber music ensembles. Her musical travels took her to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the St. Petersburg Hermitage Auditorium, the Czech Philharmonic in Prague, the Champs-Elysées Theater, the Salle Gaveau, the Salle Cortot, the Folles Journées de Nantes, the Reims Flâneries, the Présences Festival, the Athens Festival at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Berlin Tempelhof Festival, the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, the NYC Manes School of Music, the Tokyo Triphony Hall... She has recorded the complete Mozart quintet with the Stradivari quartet (Dynamic). Very interested by new repertoires, Karine Lethiec is championing musical creation (with more than thirty world premieres). Her new CD OrigInnovation, released by Arion in April 2018, is dedicated to composer Kryštof Mařatka. She is working with composers such as Betsy Jolas, Graciane Finzi, Thierry Pecou, Kryštof Mařatka, Eric Tanguy, Benoît Menut, Philippe Hersant... Artistic leader and violist of the Calliopée Ensemble since 1999, she is offering a programme promoting interdisciplinary projects in the fields of fine arts (elaboration of a musical setting of theChagall exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, as well as of the exhibitions Beyond the Stars Manet / Kandinsky, Dada Africa and Degas at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris) and history (residency at the Museum of National Archeology of Saint-Germain-en-Laye since 2018 and at the Museum of the Great War in Meaux in 2011-2018). With her friend, astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, she is conceiving and performing shows combining music and astronomy, including Mozart and the Stars or Cosmophonies, linking music, cosmos, nature and protection of our planet. According a big importance to sharing, in all its forms, Karine Lethiec is also running residencies at the United States Foundation in Paris on the theme The United States – Welcoming Land, and at the University of Orléans. For the last 17 years, she has been organizing the Rencontres de St Cézaire (in partnership with the municipality and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region), which welcome young music students from European conservatories as part of a professionalization project. Determined to democratize music and make it accessible to all, she is also actively developing actions of sensibilisation with audiences deemed inaccessible, for example with people with disabilities, including autism. Karine Lethiec is also the author of the filmH136, Martinů’s lost score, created the original soundtrack to a film by Don Kent produced by Arte, was a member of the scientific committee of the exhibitionMy violin saved my life. Very attached to the research and transmission of repertoires, her discography includes among others unknown works by Bohuslav Martinů, Louis Vierne, Lucien Durosoir, Rudi Stephan... recorded for Hortus and Alpha.
16 [ PRESENTATION FILE ] The four legged raven KRYSTOF MARATKA ENSEMBLE CALLIOPEE
Social Seat OrigINnovation Ombres et lumières avec Karine Lethiec 21 Villa du progrès Hortus 2016 Arion 2018 75019 Paris
Head Office 9 rue Édouard Vaillant 93100 Montreuil
Musique de chambre avec Bohuslav Martinů l’Ensemble Calliopée Salamandre 2015 Dux 2012 CONTACTS
Karine Lethiec Artistic leader [email protected] +33 6 12 73 14 26
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Luminarium-Astrophonia Manager Lucien Durosoir avec Karine Lethiec [email protected] Alpha 2010 Arion 2005 +33 6 47 24 18 35
Irène Guembe PR [email protected] +33 7 84 94 97 88
Mařatka / Czardas Bohuslav Martinů avec l’Ensemble Calliopée Alpha 2009 2002
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